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No but seriously, I was looking at my number of blogposts & was greatly saddened by how much they've dwindled. And I clicked on a few posts & felt so bittersweet reading comments left by people. I guess in a way this blog & all the people that gave me the time of the day to come see it & sometimes leave a note, are both strangers & friends to me.

Now it feels so surreal, surreal how my life was such an open book.

I posted such mundane, mundane things like where I ate & what I did & what I wore & whatever else. You can probably call it vapid, really. But at the same time it's quite heartening how it was so...

... simple

Those were the days before content was so carefully curated. I did of course, still watch what I said back then because well, I'm not completely retarded, but when I shared things I didn't think so much about whether it was sufficiently aesthetically pleasing. It was... just sharing things. It didn't matter if my pictures were a little grainy or too underexposed. Pictures of food were just that, no careful arrangements & deliberated placed branded sunglasses, jewelry or wallets.

Then over time that became the norm.

People stopped caring less about what you said & more about what was nice to look at.

I too, started taking better pictures. I mean, that's a good thing.

I was finally putting my DSLR to some kind of use, beyond just the Auto mode.

But wow, churning out posts the way I used to became impossible.

And I've become a lot more guarded as an "online influencer".

The same way my peers have I suppose. I know close to nothing about most new bloggers these days. I have no idea how old they are, whether they work or study, if they have any siblings, pets...

So...

Hello! Here's a little news update about myself:

I'm currently seeing someone. Have been, for almost a year.

His name is Shaun & he is 5 years older than I am.

He's not adverse to online attention or anything like that, but I find it difficult to explain why I've become so private.

I guess I feel a need to keep my public life as pristine as possible, as curated as every other Instagram feed out there.

But that's not my life, it isn't pristine.

I didn't even realise, but I stopped taking pictures.

I know right? A blogger, who stopped taking pictures.

Shaun has brought it up a few times; that I never want to take pictures together. We've gone to so many places & done so many things together, but we can come back completely empty-handed, with nothing but memories. And it saddens him that after all this time, he has very little to look back on.

And I couldn't really justify it. All I can say is, I just somehow lost the habit. Without even realising it, I simply stopped. I used to carry a camera out with me every single day & I took pictures of anything & everything. Now, I lug out my heavy DSLR the whole day, just to capture 1 outfit picture for my Instagram. I've become someone who takes pictures only intended for posting online.

I used to capture everything & upload everything. Anything that wasn't uploaded was deleted. I have never kept pictures purely for the sake of just... keeping them. My form of reminiscing was Googling my own name & whatever occasion I intended to look for.

Now that I no longer blog (much), I still keep nothing. Because I have nothing to begin with.

I can't grapple with the idea of taking pictures just for them to rot in my computer.

I just somehow can't imagine taking pictures & having nothing to.. do with them.

So I stopped altogether.

But maybe I should slowly try to struggle to get that habit back?

So hey, here's a hugeass picture of us in Paris, at a fairly new attraction termed the "I Love You" wall where it's written in a multitude of different languages. It's located somewhere in the Montmartre area. Taken with my iPhone 6.

I'm sure most of you have by now heard of Benefit Cosmetics, which is a really popular makeup brand from California! They're usually very recognisable due to the cute packaging!

If however like me, you are usually pretty lazy to dress up, battle traffic & head out to town to replenish your makeup items, you can now get them delivered straight to your home through Luxola!

Luxola is an online retailer of beauty products that has been around for quite a while now & now they finally stock Benefit Cosmetics (as well as a range of other brands)!

Luxola kindly sponsored me a few Benefit Cosmetics products to try out, which I happily selected & received all within the comfort of my home! Below are the 4 items I chose:

L-R:

Fakeup Undereye Concealer

Posiebalm (tinted lipbalm)

They're Real! Lenghtening Mascara

Big Beautiful Eyes

I basically selected items which I thought could do a simple makeup look for a casual day out!

Undereye concealer - one of the most crucial items for me due to my dark eye rings :(

What I love about this Fakeup Undereye Concealer is the mixture of moisturiser & coverage!

If you didn't notice, the concealer stick features an inner tinted beige section surrounded by the outer moisturiser, so you get a good mix of both when you apply it. This concealer also contains Vitamin E as well as apple seed extracts to keep your skin hydrated!

The concealer glides on easily & feels very moisturising without being overly oily!

My lips are perpetually dry & peeling no matter what I do, so lip balm is essential for me.

However it's often tough to layer lipstick over lip balm as the colour tends to "run" or "leak" into the tiny lines around your mouth & it just ends up looking smudged or badly applied with no clean lines.

I picked a very sweet, pink shade that's easily wearable on its own!

However I also discovered later that this lip balm layers very well with lipstick!

I dabbed my normal lipstick over this lip balm (instead of a full swiping application as the lip balm already has some colour) & found that they mixed very well. The colour didn't run at all & was pretty lasting!

As you can see, the Posiebalm is a good option for fuss-free makeup days!

Perfect for work or school, where you want some colour without overdoing it.

The Big Beautiful Eyes set is a great palette to carry around as it contains concealer + eyeshadows!

The dark brown eyeshadow is able to double up & line your eyes, without the harsh effect of actual liquid/gel eyeliners. And I simply love metallic copper/brown shades! Very wearable!

My favourite is definitely the copper-tone metallic eyeshadow!

Just to note, the brown eyeshadow is a little more powdery (good for blending) & less creamy compared to the other two, so there tends to be some flaking during application. I would recommend holding a piece of tissue under your eye to prevent it from getting on your face!

And last but not least, the They're Real! Lengthening Mascara.

I picked this in black but it comes in softer shades like brown as well!

This mascara is smudge-free & promises to really enhance your lashes! You can check out some of the before/after application pictures online & they're pretty impressive.

I did a simple makeup look using ONLY the 4 Benefit Cosmetics items above for a casual brunch!

As recommended by the instructions in the Big Beautiful Eyes palette, I used the dark brown on the outer edges to create deeper-looking eyes & lined the bottom lash line as well.

Using eyeliner on the bottom lash line often looks too overly strong so I do recommend using a dark brown eyeshadow instead, or at least layered together to lessen the abruptness of eyeliner!

I even had to forgo my usual wingtip eyeliner that I so love just to test out doing it with eyeshadow instead! It's definitely different from my usual red-lips-wing-tip look that I've been sporting for a while, but it's a nice change! This was pretty much what I looked like during my university days actually, back when I was still into light pink blushes & lipsticks.

You can of course add on your own makeup preferences for a different look!

Browse the wide range of Benefit Cosmetics products available online at Luxola.